[sjshaw]

Here is a bunch of other strategy I have cut-and-pasted together from other sources.

If it's too haphazard, let me know and I will reformat it.

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I read a bunch of threads on the topics and the manual but still don't understand precisely what it does, I understand it in real life but still a little sketchy how to adjust it for my team. I'll just list my assumptions and questions and if you agree or disagree from what you know.

Pace:
Pace will tire your players out more quickly but also the opponents. It will cause more transition points but more turnovers, based on overall passing and dribbling skills and quickness. If you have good passers and but mainly dribblers and good depth or stamina but they are not good scorers this is your best option. Other wise it is good to lower it. The manual says you spend more time looking for a shot if it is low so they're would be more passing and dribbling (depending on motions which one they'll be more of) so then there would be more chance of turnover right? But if you search more for a good shot wouldn't your FG% go up. So what's the better option here. Should depth in athleticism be the only factor.

Motion:

Basically regardless of scoring ability (JS and IS ratings) if you have better dribblers than passers and high quickness go less motion. If you have low motion and bad dribblers you will have high turnovers. If you have better passers then more motion you should have. If it is about equal then about 4-6.

Is any of this right? I would appreciate a response from HR.

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My view on when to use high pace:

a) Team is generally solid offensively at every position
b) team has good rebounding ability
c) no one standout offensive player you want to focus on
d) Lots of depth
e) High stamina, generally
f) Passing ratings aren't very good, ball handling is decent

High motion if:

a) Passing ratings are good, ball handling ratings are good
b) Team is poor defensively
c) Low stamina; little depth
d) High jumpshooting and 3-point rating than Inside and Quickness

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The quickness is what is coming into play most likely. It comes up mainly when looking at defense or trying to create shots.

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With regards to fouls, what are your press and trap settings? If I were having the fouling issues that you are having, I would have them set real low.

With the ball handling problems, what's your PG's handling rating? I use the 1-10 rating scale, and never let a guy handle the role unless he is rated a 6 out of 10 for handling at the very least. I don't recruit anyone to play the spot unless they have 7+ or 6 with a B or greater potential in that area.

If you're guard has decent handling ability, check your motion and pace settings, and increase/decrease. Essentialy, make it the opposite you have it now

I REALLY hate turnovers, and do everything I can to prevent them, so I generally run slow pace games without much motion. This combined with the players I recruit (no poor ball handling SFs, SGs or PGs will ever get a scholorship offer from me) see's me generally ranked in the top 100 schools when it comes to holding on to the ball

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As I understand it, motion will mean your guys are making a lot of cuts and whatnot, leading to a lot of open shots. However, if you're passing the ball a lot, then you're probably going to miss some, too.

I'd use motion if I have a team the _opposite_ of yours - guys who can't do much in terms of creating or sinking a shot, but play smart basketball and are conditioned.

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first thing i usually do is look at their starters. i rate them compared to my starters and see if one of my players have an advantage.

i look at their C and PF and then look at my own and see who is their strongest player and put my best defender on him (i play a man D though) i do the same thing for the SG and PG.

i then look at the defensive ability of their starters and see if i can take advantage of a players bad D in either Post or Perimeter and then make one of my players a key role player for the game. Usually i choose 3, but sometimes ill just do 2 players here.

i take a look at some of the season info stats and see if they excel in any thing that frightens me...like free throw shooting, scoring D, high offense, turnovers, etc. I make the adjustments as i need to by maybe putting even more pressure on a team that handles the ball well. or upping the pace on a team that has a good scoring D. usually if i see that a team has a low offensive output i can tell they run a slow paced game and i dont like that and want to play the tempo of my choosing and will run them to death to wear them out and get them to sub quite a bit.

now during the game i keep an eye out on who is in foul trouble on their team. if i notice someone in foul trouble on the inside, i will obviously switch up to playing an inside game and have my guards slash some and bang it with my big guys. if i notice one of my key players is not shooting well, i will take him off and choose another player who is playing well. if one of their guys is kicking my butt then he gets doubled up on unless i can put a better defender on him, which i usually would of already done at the start of the game.

late game options...once i get the lead i milk the clock in stages...i dont do it all at once, but gradually decrease the pace of the game til it is over.

also, in my conference, after i play a team, then prepare to play them again, i look at the prior game and see what worked and didnt. that is probably the best scouting tool right there is just prior matches.

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When I get serious for an important game, I start making a little chart for each opposing player. Mainly I'm formatting numbers so they stand out. I put the name at the to, then four sets of numbers. Top left is shooting, Inside-Outside-3pt. Don't care so much for FT as I can't effect that. But I want to spot when the opposition has a big inside or outside threat. Top right is defense. Bottom left is passing-handling, especially since I want to know if a pressure defense is going to work on them. Bottom right is steals-blocks. Guess I need more than four, as Rebounding has to go in there. And usually I write Quick-Jmp-Str across the bottom somewhere. The main one I watch is Quick, as I use that as a guide as to when I should press and run on a team.

Don't know if the system is that good, but the idea is to get me an organization to those ratings so I'm not just staring at a row of numbers.

When I'm playing Man defense, I'm mostly concerned about matchups. I need good defenders on their scorers. So those shooting stats are the main thing I look at. On my own offense, if I spot something awful in the other defense, or something really good (9 post def with 9 block), I might tilt my offense towards or away from it. But on offense I tend to watch my team, and then try to spot a hot player and tilt towards them. Since I don't know exactly what's happening with a zone, or if the opposition is double-teaming, that seems to be the best way to go. Seems like you could get into trouble by trying to attack their 3 perimeter defense, but you don't know that your player is being doubleteamed.

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My strategy:
(1) Hire good to excellent assistant coaches
(2) recruit mediocre players that are excellent in steals and their defense (interior for PF/C and perimeter for PG/SG)
(3) recruit players with high inside scoring ability
(4) Press and Trap at 10 the entire game every game
(5) Only use 3 or 4 defenses per season, trying to get them to 100 as soon as possible.
(6) Pace, motion, and 3 point shooting set depending on teams talent
(7) Red-shirt as much as possible
( Play as many games as early in the season as possible (this gets your teams proficiency in playing their defenses higher before the teams you are playing. Watch out for injuries though, because if you bunch too many games together, one minor injury may take out a key player for a lot of games)


How this works: By recruiting for a very specific style of play I avoid competing head to head with teams for players I can not win. A lot of times a very good defensive player (3+ steals with B+ or better in their key defensive rating) will go unrecruited because they can't shoot, rebound, pass or all three. However, because this strategy leads to a lot of steals and fastbreaks, the players shooting rating means very little (a lot of dunks on the fast break). I prefer inside shooting because I want my guys taking the ball to the hoop as much as possible, drawing fouls and taking higher percentage shots because my team is often times only mediocre (or worse) in the half-court sets. With this strategy, I can beat some very good teams, but sometimes I get beat by a team with a very good point guard, who just refuses to turn the ball over (even if his team isn't that good). As my team improves, I'll keep an eye out for those games where I don't think the pressing and trapping will do any good, and drop back into a more conventional setting.

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If I'm ever playing a team that has poor ball handlers (which happens quite often, considering the quality of teams I play mostly), I just press and trap the heck out of them. This has been successful for me, but it does require some bench depth, as your starters tire quite quickly.

Another mistake I have made is playing only a man defense. Most of my starters are good defenders, but to keep a player like my stud Center on the court (who only has a fatigue rating of 4), I need to set his D intensity to low, which means we get burnt every so often by teams with two inside threats. It does keep him out of foul trouble though (he is rated a 3 for fouls). I'd like to be able to mix this up a little bit as my conference has a few teams with good inside players, but it's too late to switch defenses now, as my man D rating is 99, whilst I'm 50 for everything else.

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I've been tending to run 3 defenses. Man-to-Man, and inside zone (2-1-2, 2-3 type) and an outside zone (2-3). For exactly the reason you state, get those proficiencies up.

Too bad they don't carry over year to year. Maybe go up slower during a year, and maybe have the rate of increase depend on the level, ie its harder to go from 90 to 91 than it is to go from 50 to 51.

But it seems like a program like Temple that plays a Matchup Zone for year after year should get some benefit from having Seniors who've played that system for four years. Especially if the coaches stick with the program too.

I keep trying to redshirt, but can't always do much of it. But I definitely look every year when I can to see if I can redshirt.

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C: INS/DRB/PSD Strength
PF: Same
SF: Kind of an all-around player who can play both inside or outside. You can play either a good interior or good outside playere here too as long as you adjust the game plan.
SG: INS/JPS/PRD Jumping and Quickness
PG: Handling and Quickness. Then Passing/PRD.

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motion, lots of 3 pointers, tons of pressing and trapping. '40 minutes of hell' if you will. We have great success and make the Elite 8. Average scores are like 90-80

Year 2: All that talent graduated, well my starting 5 did. The freshman were too raw to use and the top 5 for that year were clearly a step below what I had last year. The AI still recommended a very up tempo game, but 3 of my first 5 games were blowout losses, so clearly a change had to be made. I knew my top 5 guys were good, but I had little depth and was weak at the 3 point shooting, so I set the pace to 0, motion to 10, medium use of three pointers, and set the scoring focus to bang it in the paint. We turned the season around and made the Elite 8 again. Average scores are like 60-50.

Year 3: We have depth now, so we pick up the tempo a bit. We struggle though and finish 19-13, getting knocked out in the first round of the tournament as a 7 seed.

That is just one example, but the one of my favorite strategies it to recruit all defensive players and play a real grind it out game of ball. Pitt Panther like basketball if you will. The game recommended setting will never give you this from what I have seen, so you have to set it on your own. It is hardly micro-managing. It takes all of 60 seconds to decide what type of game you want to play, and it is just so well done, and something that not a lot of sims do well.

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My favorite strategy is probably run and gun. 10 pace, 10 pressing, 10 trapping, usually high 3-pointers. Just go out and recruit some solid perimeter players with high stealing and then add one or two guys who can rebound. Almost too effective with lesser teams (although that could be due to almost always out-recruiting the AI teams in the lower levels.) I think I'm going to try it with a Top 10/15 team and see if it can be as effective in the power conferences.

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A couple more thoughts on recruiting:

1. Once I get rolling, I only go after high school players, with one exception: if a guy decides to leave school early and I don't have someone waiting in the wings to be a solid starter the next season.

2. In light of only going after high school players, and redshirting practically every single one of them, when I am assessing my recruiting position needs, I only look at players who are Sophs and lower. Because my recruits won't be playing next season anyway, I don't care that much about the talent of the current Junior class.

3. There are useful players to be found amongst the one-star crowd. Check out Donald Kelly from above. Rated #1316 overall, I expect he'll give me some pretty decent scoring and shot-blocking off the bench....and maybe even as a starter one day.

4. Stats are at least somewhat meaningful. Check them! They can be especially helpful in finding guys who might be able to play out of their listed position. If I'm looking for a point guard, I sort first on steals, then I start looking down the page at guys who average more assists than turnovers--even if they are listed at 2 or 3. Some of these guys end up having good ball handling skills and quickness, and can be converted into point guards. A few other ones...
Tall PG's with solid scoring numbers could be 2G's.
Tall SG's with good scoring and rebouding? Perhaps he can fill that need at SF.
Post players with decent steals and Ast/Tur ratios sometimes end up being quick enough and good enough ball handlers to play SF.
Similarly, taller SF's with high rebounds, shot blocking and who are on the heavy side for their heights might just have the skills to get it done in the paint.

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I use stats a decent bit but you have given me some food for thought. I REALLY look at fg%/ft%/3% a lot. If a guy is in the high fours or low fives I consider him a player. Then I match this with his points output to see if I have a scorer or an opportunist who either rebounds well or knows how to play within his game. I don't know if it matters but in the past it's served me well when culling the ones and twos. This is actually the first time to start a low level team where I haven't had to take at least one 2 or less.

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I've found that giving a guy 10 points in stamina for at least his first two training camps general gets them at least passable. As smart as this guy is, you probably won't have to give him any study points. I'd go after him in a heartbeat at this stage of your career. Don't even think twice about it. Yeah, this is the kind of go after heavy early one.

I don't pretend to fully have a handle on playing time yet. Knowing that there are two ways to help control how tired my guys get (pace and playing time) I have just adhered to these general rules:

1. Solid reserves + low endurance starters = low playing time for starters and faster pace.
2. Bad reserves + high endurance starters = high playing time for starters and slower pace.

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The thing I think I like best about this game is that I've found that doing what is simple and logical usually has the expected results. One season in particular really sold me. I had two very good post players, decent ball-handling (but not good at shooting or driving) guards, and an average SF. Also, I didn't have a lot of depth. I lowered the pace to 1 or 2, put the focus on the inside game, and made my two big guys the only offensive focal players. The results were very satisfying. We *crushed* most of the teams we played, even good ones, because they couldn't stop us from scoring nearly every time down the court as we'd patiently get it inside. However, there were a few teams in my weak conference that gave me trouble, and I had two conference losses even. Both conference losses, and all of our close games even, were against teams with good defensive guards, and the losses were high-scoring. I didn't check every game, but in the ones I did check, I saw those teams doing a lot of pressing and trapping. Perhaps other teams tried it as well, but remember, I had decent guards. However, they weren't GREAT guards. The teams with very good defensive guards had a lot of success against us, and ultimately, we lost in the 2nd round of the NCAA's to a lesser team with good defensive guards.